Loners of the Universe

Neutrinos sail
through space, through walls, through planets, never even slowing
down.

On an ordinary day in Centerville, USA, two strangers, Jones
and Smith, pass through town. Mr. Jones pulls up to the Centerville Motel and
books a room for the night, chatting with the desk clerk as he signs the guest
book and checks in. On the clerk's recommendation, he eats dinner  steak
and fries, with a side of salad  at the Centerville Grille. Mr. Jones is
the outgoing type, and by the time he leaves the restaurant, he has made the
acquaintance not only of the waiter but of the couple at the table next to his.
After dinner, they all stop for a drink at the Centerville Tap. In the morning,
Mr. Jones pays his motel bill with a credit card, fills up with premium at the
Centerville Service Station, buys the paper at the drug store, and has the
Farmhouse Special breakfast at the Centerville Diner before moving down the
road.

Mr. Smith, on the other hand, is a loner. He drives through
town on the freeway, not even slowing down for the Centerville exit.

You are a detective. You have come to Centerville to track down
Mr. Jones and Mr. Smith. Which one will be easier to trace? Clearly, you will
have no problem discovering Mr. Jones's activities, because he interacted with
at least a dozen different people in Centerville. But it will be almost
impossible to learn about Mr. Smith, because he interacted with no one. No one
even knows he passed through. We are known by our interactions.

Neutrinos are the Mr. Smiths of the universe. They sail through
space, through walls, through planets, never even slowing down. Every minute,
trillions of solar neutrinos flit through our bodies at nearly the speed of
light. When they have passed through, they leave no trace, because they almost
never interact with other particles. They are the loners of the particle world.

There are many particle candidates for the role of Mr. Jones.
When they encounter other particles, they interact with them, sometimes
beneficially and at other times in ways that damage those they encounter. But
because neutrinos almost never interact, they can do no harm.

Detecting Neutrinos

The same "loner" characteristics that make neutrinos harmless
also make them very hard to detect and to study. The MINOS experiment will try
to get a better understanding of neutrinos by forcing a few of them to pull off
the expressway  to interact inside a detector  by putting five
thousand tons of iron in their path. Most of the neutrinos from the source beam
will cruise right through the iron of the detector without slowing down; but a
very few will stop and sign the guest book. From those few, experimenters hope
to learn more about the characteristics of these elusive particles.

The experiment will use a beam of neutrinos from Fermilab, 40
miles west of Chicago. The beam will pass beneath northern Illinois and
Wisconsin on its split-second trip to the detector, deep in a former iron mine
in Soudan, Minnesota. Because it can pass through the earth essentially without
interacting, the beam will not need a tunnel, and it will have no potential for
causing harm in its path. In fact, if a person could stand directly in the beam
for a million years, the number of interactions that took place in that
person's body would cause no harm.

The Mr. Joneses of the world may bring good or bad to those
they meet, but the Mr. Smiths have no effect at all, because they are only
passing though.